“This is what I like, this is why I need to be here”: Young women’s pleasure in the urban night time economy

Abstract

Pleasure is at the heart of ‘nights out’, yet research on the UK’s night-time economy has consistently focussed instead on the risks and harms experienced by particular groups. Where this body of work has met research on young women, the emphasis on the problems of the night-time economy has been especially evident. This paper extends understandings of this subject by making an analysis of young women’s pleasure central. It uses qualitative data to argue that young women’s pleasure in the night-time economy is related to a deep sense of mutuality and, going further, introduces the term ‘opened-out subjectivity’ to characterise this sense of connection. Finally, it shows how this subjectivity helps constitute the appeal of nights out, a new direction in night-time economy research.